Close encounters with monkey-man monster...

CURIOUS SIGHTINGS OF BIGFOOT NEAR CANNOCK CHASE

- RICHARD PURSEHOUSE AND BEN CUNLIFFE Sunday Mercury Historians

HERE is an urban myth that a man in an ape-suit used to jump out at drivers at night near the German War Cemetery on Cannock Chase.

Although the rumour it was an off-duty serving police officer at the time was pure speculation. Or was it? Craig Blackmore and a friend were convinced they had seen a huge, ape-like creature at the side of the road on Levedale Lane between Stafford and Penkridge.

What they didn’t know was what they claimed happened was a few miles from another “Bigfoot” sighting four years previously.

Craig, a 19-year-old HGV mechanic, expanded on the event in a 2002 interview: “I was driving my Fiesta down the road towards Penkridge and as we approached a house, the security light came on.

“I saw something in the corner of my eye. It was coming towards the car, running very fast. It wasn’t a dog or a deer. It was running like a human would run, but it was really hairy and dark. It came level and jumped at the car but just missed.

“My friend turned round and said it was huge and had run through the hedge and across the field. I turned the car around but there was no sign of it.”

The incident was over in seconds. A few minutes later, at the family home in Penkridge, Craig and his mother Val tried to make sense of the bizarre experience.

Val said: “I have never seen Craig like that before. He came home shaking, absolutely petrified and white, as though he'd seen a ghost. I thought maybe Craig had been drinking, or perhaps someone had spiked a drink. But that hadn’t happened. He is a very truthful boy. He would not say something had happened if it hadn’t. And anyway, his friend was in the same state of shock.”

Craig did not report it to the police. He told a few friends (“they all laughed”) and tried to forget the experience. And then, a few weeks later, a local paper carried a report by the Walsall-based UFO writer Nick Redfern on the legend of Bigfoot.